Xceptional Leaders with Mai Ling Chan & James Berges

In our opening segment, Mai Ling and James talk about the importance of networking in your local area, in addition to building a national or international network. This valuable discussion is followed by Mai Ling's interview with founder and CEO of Adapt the Game, Victor Ocando Finol. Victor talks about his experience as a sports fan with limited mobility due to cerebral palsy and the challenges o...

Today we're featuring an informative conversation between James and fellow speech-language pathologist, Alan Vu. As an SLP and an AAC specialist, Alan was able to leverage his professional background and his personal experience as a person who stutters to help create a new app that combines AI with AAC, called Flexspeak. James and Alan talk about what Flexspeak does and what Alan and his team are...

Mai Ling starts off this solo-hosted episode with an update about our new episode collections that make it easy to do a deep dive into a specific topic. Then she brings founder and CEO of Space Dream Productions, Koura Linda, onto the show to talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion in film production and how her company is working in that arena. Koura talks about being a facilitator of communi...

The topic of today's episode is personal for Mai Ling. Before our guest joins the show to talk about ADHD, Mai Ling shares her own personal experience with her diagnosis. James then sits down with startup founder and expert ADHD/neurodiversity advocate/speaker, Chris Wang to talk all about ADHD and its effects on adults. Chris is the co-founder and CEO of Shimmer, a comprehensive behavioral tech p...

Our guest today is Elisa Shipon-Blum, or Dr. E, as her patients call her. She is the President and Director of the Selective Mutism Anxiety and Related Disorders Treatment Center (SMart Center). Dr E is an expert on Selective Mutism (SM) and has helped to treat thousands of patients over the past three decades. She speaks with Mai Ling about how she started her work in the area of SM, the genesis...

In the introduction to this episode's interview, Mai Ling shares an exciting announcement about an upcoming project that she'll be working on. Then we jump into a conversation between Mai Ling and Dr. Li-Rong "Lilly" Cheng, who is the Director of the Chinese Cultural Center at San Diego State University. Dr. Cheng was the founder of the Asian Pacific Islander Caucus of ASHA and she talks about her...

Comedian and screenwriter Greg Roque joins the show today for an insightful conversation with James. As a teen, Greg had a spinal injury which paralyzed him and he brings his unique perspective on life as a disabled person to his comedy. He shares with us a little about his approach to comedy, where the line is for comedy about disability, and the accessibility challenges he's faced as a comic in...

Before we introduce our guest in this episode, Mai Ling shares a major update about a new venture that she is embarking on that has a connection to our guest. And that guest is technology explorer, evaluator, and reviewer, Yonah Welker, who has a mission to reshape how nations, cities and ecosystems embrace human-centered algorithms, environments, policy and emerging technology – specifically addr...

Our guest today is UK-based, Disability Inclusion Specialist Michael Grimmett. Michael talks with James about an inaccessibility incident at his local pizza restaurant that he was able to use to shine light on accessibility issues. As a wheelchair user and disability advocate, Michael's personal experiences have given him a platform to talk about the terminology and language around disability and...

Our hosts, Mai Ling and James, share some important updates on what is going on in their respective careers before we dive into a discussion with our guest. Sawsan Zakaria chats with Mai Ling about her participation in the Easterseals Disability Film Challenge on multiple occasions. As an actress and model with a neuromuscular disease called spinal muscular atrophy, Sawsan talks about her experien...

Today, we welcome to the show Vanessa Castañeda Gill, the Co-Founder and CEO of Social Cipher, a game-based, social-emotional learning platform for neurodiverse youth. Social Cipher launched their first game called Ava, and Vanessa shares the story of its development and the impact it's made on the target audience. She also talks about growing up with ADHD and Autism, how that has affected who she...

Just a few years ago, our guest Sandie Roberts, suddenly found herself at the intersection of being a middle-aged woman and a full-time wheelchair user. Unable to find adequate fashion options to suit both her new situation and her personal tastes, Sandie decided to do something about it. Sandie sits down with Mai Ling to talk about these unique experiences that led her to launch Roll With Style,...

Speech-language pathologist and educator, Sandy Dorsey, is our guest this week on the show. As a global advocate for children with special needs, Sandy talks with James about how disability is viewed in developing countries and what she's doing to overcome stigmas about disability and educate the public. She's also the founder of the non-profit organization, Smiles for Speech, which provides acces...

As we kick off the first episode of the new year, Mai Ling and James share their thoughts on new year's resolutions. Then Mai Ling sits down with Chanda Hinton, Executive Director of the Chanda Center for Health and Chanda Plan Foundation, to talk about her journey of founding and running the health care center. They also discuss proactive and preventive health care options, the stigma around not-...

For our Xceptional Leaders 2022 finale episode, Mai Ling and James share some thoughts and observations on the new National Disability Institute report, Small Business Ownership by People with Disabilities: Challenges and Opportunities. They also share some highlights from past podcast guests that pertain to some of the points addressed in the NDI report. We think you'll enjoy this part retrospect...

Our guest for this episode is Dr. Carlene MacMillan, an expert in mental health and VP of Clinical Innovation at Osmind. Carlene's area of focus is exploring innovative mental health treatments for anxiety and depression, among other conditions. She talks with James about some of these treatments such as psychedelic assisted therapy and Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) therapy. Over the cou...

Today, James and Mai Ling share some updates on their journeys and then Mai Ling brings us an insightful conversation with speaker, writer, and social media influencer, August Rocha. August talks about the value of participating in and even building your own online communities in today's culture. Intersectionality, advice for starting a TikTok account to build a brand, and life with Behçet's disea...

We're excited to bring this week's guest to you today. Rachel Madel joins James for an insightful discussion from her wealth of experience. Rachel is a speech-language pathologist, AAC specialist, podcast host, and international presenter who shares about the value of networking and building relationships, her mantra "inspire don't require", some of her approaches to speech therapy, thoughts on Ge...

Our guest this week is futurist and thought leader, Giselle Mota, who focuses on enabling inclusion as it relates to product design, the future of work, and all things emerging tech including web3 and metaverse. She joins Mai Ling to talk about her work as the creator of NFTY Collective, which aims to ensure that people of diverse representation are included, represented, and able to access web3 a...

Clothing designer Chamiah Dewey joins the show today to talk with Mai Ling about her work. She created Chamiah Dewey Fashion, the UK's first clothing brand for people with Dwarfism/short stature. Chamiah tells about the beginnings of her fashion design career, the impetus for launching her company, and her system for breaking up business-related tasks throughout a week. This conversation not only...

Bryan Dinner is our guest for this episode of Xceptional Leaders. He is the CEO and founder of Clarifi, the desktop app that assists teens with ADHD and attention challenges with completing online homework. Bryan talks with James about his personal experience with ADHD, what led him to found the company, and his process for developing a minimum viable product (MVP). This discussion is a great case...

We're so happy to bring you this insightful and informative episode today about breakthrough voice technology. James chats with co-founder and VP of Strategy at Voiceitt, Sara Smolley. Voiceitt is a speech recognition app for people with speech disabilities, but to fully understand the capabilities and potential, Sara talks about various use cases and how users benefit. She also shares tips for en...

Mai Ling and James kick off this episode sharing what they are up to lately. Mai Ling talks about her new approach to Tiktok and James reports on his recent work change. After these updates, Mai Ling shares a conversation she had with speaker and personal development coach, Carson Tueller. Carson talks with Mai Ling about the meaning of ableism, his personal journey of coming to grips with a life-...

Today Mai Ling chats with Mike Adams, the CEO of Purple, a disability organization working to bring disabled people and businesses together. Mike talks about his work building a fully accessible online marketplace, why he and his team took the build-from-scratch approach, and what brought him to start a career in the disability sector to begin with. He also shares about the success of the Purple T...

Our guest for this episode is Occupational Therapist and Gerontologist, Raheema Hemraj. Mai Ling speaks with her about her work as the co-creator of the Rehab Tech Summit and they dive into how the event started, who it is for, and some of the spin-off events. Rahemma also tackles the question of whether or not one needs to have clinical experience to move into the health tech/product development...